Where oh where have the smart people gone?
We went to see Mike Judge's movie
Idiocracy, about an average guy who is kept in suspended animation for five hundred years and emerges to find that, since natural selection has favored the prolifically-breeding unintelligent end of the human gene pool, he is now the smartest man on Earth.
I wanted to see this movie partly because of the Kornbluthian premise, and partly because I like
King of the Hill, but also I have to admit my interest was increased by the fact that Twentieth Century Fox doesn't particularly want anyone to see the movie in theaters, and is presumably doing the contractually-obliged minimum in that direction. There has been zero advertising of the movie. In the Los Angeles area, it is only showing at a single hole-in-the-wall theater in Pasadena; and Los Angeles is apparently one of the few metropolitan areas where it is showing at all.
Having gone to some slight effort to see it, I really wanted to like the movie, but it was just okay. Maribeth opined that the movie was "a world of suck," but I think that might be a little harsh. Even Maribeth conceded that the movie had "some good ideas" but the execution was just so-so.
I think even a bad movie can be rewarding if it makes you think about how it could have been better. In the case of
Idiocracy, the main thing it's made me think is that a Marching Morons scenario is really unlikely. For one thing, I think the reproductive advantage of stupidity is probably overrated. Even among the characters of
Idiocracy, we see that the more successful idiots have harems of multiple wives, while other idiots, who on balance are presumably even stupider, are incarcerated in prison. For another thing, if Earth is in a race between
Idiocracy and
Gattaca, I think
Gattaca is likely to win out.
---Speaking of evolutionary advantage, on the way out the other day I noticed a resting moth which was perfectly color-matched to the yellowish stucco of the building.
Also, I just saw a hummingbird which was just about the same size and shape as the conical flowers from which it was feeding and shaking clouds of pollen. This was probably not so much an evolved adaptation, and more just a coincidence... but at the first glance, my first thought was to wonder why one of the flowers was rapidly flitting about.
---Speaking of a world filled with idiots, the other day I saw in the store both a card game and an "interactive" DVD game based on the game show
Deal or No Deal.
Ten percent luck, twenty percent skill, fifteen percent concentrated power of will
So last night we had a great time at the Japanese-American Bar Association table at the Asian-American Journalists Association 25th Anniversary Trivia Bowl. When it comes to the AAJA Trivia Bowl, the Japanese-American Bar Association is not cliqueish. It is not overly hung up on your Japanese-American ancestry, or whether you have passed the bar. It is more interested in whether you can help win the AAJA Trivia Bowl. I suppose this win-at-all-costs attitude is a very desirable trait in a trial lawyer.
Anyway, we were deputized into the JABA and proceeded to represent our client to the best of our ability. It was very nice to see Jason and Don and Dave again, and even nicer to work as a team with Dee and Eric and James, beating the living daylights out of every media organization in Los Angeles. At the end of the evening we collected the trophy with a score of 77 points out of 100. I think second place went to the NBC Channel 4 news team with 69 points.
At one point in the dinner, I'm looking at the back of this girl's head at the next table.
And I'm thinking, I realize there are upwards of three hundred Asian women in this room, but is that the back of the head of
Keiko Agena, a.k.a. Lane Kim of
Gilmore Girls?
And indeed it was! This was my greatest feat of celebrity spotting since I recognized the back of Tim Meadows' head in
Babalu.
Keiko was sitting at the City News Service table. Unfortunately her table's demonstrated knowledge of current events, history, geography, arts, entertainment, science, literature, sports, and California was a trifle lackluster. They ended the night with only 12 points. However, I think they stopped trying halfway through.
At the same time real-me was correctly remembering King Gyanendra of Nepal but not remembering how to spell myxomatosis, television-me was getting booted off the show
1 vs. 100 for not knowing the color of number 1 on a roulette wheel. Being in the 100 on that show is a sucker's game, but I did make about $740. And you know: at least it's show biz.
Does that make me crazy? Possibly
We watched the movie version of
Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins. I mean Gwyneth and Anthony were in the movie, not watching it with us.
Amazingly, the movie discards one of the best lines of the play, when Catherine is talking to her dead father about whether or not she's going crazy, and he remarks that the fact that she's talking to him is "not a good sign."
Also, the funeral scene in the movie, not present in the play, comes close to spoiling the plot and seems to violate the "show, don't tell" rule with Catherine just explaining from the podium how she feels about things.
So, I liked the play a bit better than the movie.
Gwyneth Paltrow's version of Catherine still reminded me of Mary-Louise Parker, and
once again I had to wonder about the chain of causality there.
Swim faster, fish-shaped pancake
Because the RAND building is shaped like a fish, or like an eye, it has sharp corners on the ends. In order to get from my office to the coffee maker, I have to walk around the nose of the fish, or the corner of the eye. I knew that I was always crashing into people doing this, but I didn't really appreciate until today that it is because the passageway turns more than ninety degrees. The sightlines are obscured!
Also in the category of just-noticed building features, the nearest stairwell has gigantic windows and a spectacular view, which makes for a relatively pleasant stairwell-climbing experience. But, the great view (of ocean, trees, mountains, etc.) is partly because of the large open space to the north of the building. This will eventually be blocked when they get around to building apartments on the vacant lot.
I finished
Broken Angels by Richard Morgan, the sequel to
Altered Carbon. In
Altered Carbon, super-agent Takeshi Kovacs was a Philip Marlowe detective in the twenty-fifth century. In this sequel, he's a mercenary commando in the middle of a war; there are more explosions.
It was okay, if you like that kind of thing, but by the time I was finished with the book, I wasn't in the mood for space opera any more. As science fiction, it is rather unimaginative; the people in this book can be digitally stored and potentially reincarnated in one body after another, yet this doesn't seem to have affected their approach toward war or death very much at all.
Richard Morgan falls in love with using periods to create breaks in dialogue. I'm not. Saying this is a bad thing necessarily. I sort of like it. In small doses. But he might. Overuse it. A bit.
I would buy you a K-car
[What kind of name for a car is Reliant anyway? What about the Dependent or the Plymouth Needy?]
The good news is that DARPA
officially announced that we will receive a million dollars in funding (subject to completion of technical milestones).
The surprising news is that we're the only small team of the eleven entities that received funding. The second-smallest team on the list is a company with over 60 employees. The largest entity on the list has 80,000 employees.
The bad news is that, for mysterious legislative reasons, DARPA seems to have lost its Congress-given authority to award cash prizes. So there won't be a $2 million prize for actually wining the Urban Challenge any more: just a trophy.
